Kadugli did not choose to become a besieged city. Its position in the heart of South Kordofan placed it squarely within the war’s calculations, transforming the city into a geographic chokepoint no side could afford to ignore.
Today, the city is emerging from a forced isolation that lasted more than two years, shifting from a position of sheer survival to a strategic anchor driving military operations westward.
The siege began with the complete closure of roads and the regular disruption of supplies. In February 2025, the Sudanese Armed Forces succeeded in reopening the Kadugli–Dilling road, but the encirclement tightened again in December of the same year. At that point, the Rapid Support Forces, backed by the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement–North led by Abdelaziz al-Hilu, seized an area locally known as the “key to control,” a position that enabled them to dominate troop movements and shape the fate of South Kordofan as a whole.
On Jan. 6, 2026, the World Food Program issued a warning that humanitarian workers described as unprecedented, after the city was completely cut off and acute famine cases were recorded. The warning was not purely humanitarian; it carried a political and military message that the continued siege of Kadugli threatened the collapse of South Kordofan. That assessment hastened a broad field operation that ultimately broke the encirclement.
Commenting on the lifting of the siege, Sudanese journalist Faisal Saad said it was clear that the Sudanese Armed Forces and allied fighting units had secured solid logistical support that enabled them to achieve breakthroughs, particularly in Dilling and Kadugli. He noted that the siege of Kadugli and Dilling lasted more than 684 days, according to available figures — nearly 1,000 days since the start of the war.
Saad added that the advance places the army before a test of “strategic patience” aimed at isolating Kordofan from Darfur, arguing that the balance of control in South Kordofan has tilted in favor of the army as the presence of the Rapid Support Forces recedes from areas that were once its traditional strongholds.
From a battlefield perspective, military expert Amin Ismail Majzoub said the nature of the terrain was decisive. “Military operations have taken on a highly favorable posture today with the lifting of the siege of Kadugli,” he said. “This victory represents the end of the Rapid Support Forces militia in the area; it became entangled in a war across mountainous terrain and tropical forests where the Sudanese army is seasoned in combat.”
Majzoub added that breaking the siege means “the target bank has shifted entirely northward, and the next battle will be on the edges of Darfur.”
The military shift carries economic implications, according to Aqad Ibn Koni, the media official for the Darfur Regional Government. He said lifting the siege was a strategic turning point because Kadugli links South Kordofan to West Kordofan, Khartoum and Darfur. “The next move has a decisive economic dimension,” he said, “namely control over the oil fields of Heglig oil field, Baleela oil field and Sharif oil field, which are the state’s main lifeline.”
Saad, however, offered a more complex reading of the future of the oil-producing areas, pointing to regional balances that impose what he described as “compulsory neutrality.”
“I do not expect fighting to intensify in the oil fields,” he said, “because any confrontation would lead to the involvement of South Sudan as the biggest beneficiary of the oil pipeline. When the Rapid Support Forces reached Heglig, the two sides, through South Sudanese mediation, agreed on an arrangement resembling a demilitarized zone controlled by South Sudanese forces to avoid damage to the facilities.”
After the siege, Kadugli has become a compass redirecting the war toward western fronts and energy fields. As the influence of the Rapid Support Forces wanes and its leverage on the ground erodes, a question presses itself forward: Does the lifting of the siege of Kadugli mark the beginning of a trajectory that ends with dismantling the Rapid Support Forces’ presence in Darfur and starts the countdown to the end of Sudan’s longest modern war?
